


Battle Wounds

by eirabach



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Pen and Ink Week 2020, Post SOS 2, Prompt Fic, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27370000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: Your battle wounds are scars upon my heart[day two of pen and ink week 2020 on tumblr]
Relationships: Penelope Creighton-Ward/Gordon Tracy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Battle Wounds

It does not do, in her line of work, to be afraid.

They can smell it. The men with power and influence. They can sniff out a weakness in moments and exploit it for years and it simply _cannot_ be allowed, not when she’s established herself, her reputation, sold herself as steel wrapped in pink satin, and guaranteed with simpering smiles that dispense cyanide more swiftly than kisses. 

It’s the twenty-first century, but that doesn’t mean Penelope doesn’t know that she’s risen to her position by clambering, stiletto clad, over the bodies of the women who fell in the battle before her. Penelope knows that life is always, at its core, still a war.

Her battle wounds are different, that’s all. 

Different to his.

She’s sitting up on the balcony, the one that overlooks the pool, with her knees drawn tight under her chin and her hair loose. Below her, she can hear the soft baritone of Virgil over the lapping of the water, his words just a low, comforting mumble from up here. That’s ok. She isn’t listening to him anyway.

Gordon’s scars are bright against too pale skin, his back a macabre dot-to-dot of stitching marks and raised purple welts that wrap around his shoulder, trace the line of his spine. Close, too close. Unbearable.

Because Penelope feels them, every last one, like a brand against her chest, like pieces of her own flesh cut away until she’s skinned and raw and hurting. Frightened, down to her very soul, but not of the scars. Not of the bleeping hospital machines, or the hover chair, or the crutches.

She isn’t afraid of the way his wasted leg drags in the water, or the scowl she can see on his face even from here. She’s entirely unbothered by the way he snarls and snaps at Virgil, at the way he bats Alan’s hands away as he comes to help.

No.

It’s far worse than that.

She’s afraid that one day -- one day one of the men she goes to war with will catch the scent of sunshine on her dress. Will pause, and take note, and tear her apart. Tear her apart just to find out the name carved, scar like, into her heart, into her very bones and that he’ll smile, and know. That he’ll use it, that secret that lies at the beginning and the middle and the very, very end of her.

It does not do, in her line of work, to have a weakness. 

And that -- that is the problem because Penelope knows that more than anything, the person she is at war with is herself.

And Penelope knows that she is losing.

Down below, Gordon is pulling himself from the water. He’s still favouring his one side, his shattered collarbone still tentatively held together with steel and bolts, and she’s holding her breath, counting the heartbeats it takes him to free himself from the water, holding it -- steady, _steady_ \-- until Virgil and Alan are back at his side and there’s a towel around his shoulders and his head drops.

She should leave, now. He’s safe in the company of his brothers, his scars will fade under the island sun, and she -- she should take hers away. Nurse them and bury them and forget -- forget the way he’d felt in her arms, on her lap, how her name had sounded on pale, drug slow lips. 

She should leave. He looks up. Smiles, small and tired and pained and hers.

And Penelope knows that she is lost.


End file.
